How to cultivate a culture of continuous improvement in product marketing

Let's try a quick visualization exercise. Imagine an exceptional, high-performing marketing team – perhaps one you've encountered in your current or previous workplace, or even one you've read about. Think big. Think about how this team pushes boundaries, operates at an elevated level, and influences organizations positively.

Now, take a moment to consider the key qualities that set such teams apart. What distinguishes them from average teams? Why are they so successful? Several qualities probably come to mind: a clear identity, an in-depth understanding of customer desires, diversity of thought and perspective, impressive outputs, strong stakeholder relationships, and effective communication.

To me, all these awesome things boil down to a few foundational pillars, the most prominent being a well-defined operating model backed by solid processes. These processes give teams the structure they need to grow and become a launchpad for focusing on what really counts – delivering exceptional results.

When processes and operating models are defined, you can set clear guidelines for ownership and expectations around how to get things done. This frees up time for project owners to find optimizations, conduct research, and test hypotheses.

On top of saving time and all that good stuff, having a clear way of working can also help you refine your team culture. By building in values that emphasize scalability, feedback, and optimizations, you lay the foundation for a culture of continuous improvement.

Creating a culture of continuous improvement can take many forms. It could involve optimizing internal tools and processes, focusing on self-learning and personal growth, gathering external feedback on products, or proactively getting ahead of external threats like changing market conditions and potential competitors.

No matter what's on your product marketing team's to-do list, the strategies I'll share in this article are designed to help you create a culture that's all about getting better and better. I'm going to let you in on some tips and tricks to ensure your team is always striving for improvement, and more importantly, that they have the right tools to make it happen.

These strategies won't just help you improve your current ways of working; they'll also guide your organization towards bigger successes. So, buckle up and get ready. By the time you've finished this article, you'll be well-equipped to help your team reach new heights, crush its goals, and be the high-performing team you've always imagined.

Let's dive in.

How product marketers can create a culture of continuous improvement

Creating a culture of continuous improvement as a product marketer can be challenging. Change management, in particular, is really hard – there’s no two ways about it. It involves shifting mindsets and behaviors, and it takes a lot effort and education to bring others along on the journey.

To help get change off the ground, it’s vital to have a clear vision of where the team should go and an outline of what needs to be transformed. This is where you can start planting the seeds of a continuous improvement mindset, ideating a future state that emphasizes consistent optimization. Without a defined desired outcome, the team is a rudderless ship with no direction. You’re going around in circles and making no progress.

The road ahead is inevitably going to be bumpy, but setting micro-goals can help you stay on track. Plus, by breaking down the broader picture into smaller achievable objectives, it will be easier to monitor progress towards your goal.

Once you’ve outlined where you want to be, the next step is to get buy-in from the team. This is critical. I’ve found that the best way to do this is to hold a session that brings the entire team together to discuss the vision and outcome.

During this session, it’s important to encourage the team to develop a set of values and principles. This sets the tone for the team and fosters a sense of community. It's like getting everyone on the bus: you’re all onboard together with a shared destination.

Building an operating model

From here, the focus shifts to establishing ground rules and building an operating model that integrates this new culture. This means clarifying the roles and responsibilities of product marketing within the organization, implementing the team's new values, and defining how the team interacts with other teams.

On top of all this, written processes and templates – things that are near and dear to my heart – provide guidance on how to accomplish tasks effectively and efficiently, ensuring scalability and consistency across the team. A quick plug: the Product Marketing Alliance has some fantastic templates. They’ve given me some great inspiration on ways to implement new processes.

To integrate this new thinking into daily team interactions, I suggest doing two things:

First, tie this vision into your team and individual OKRs. Look at how you can translate high-level concepts into more tangible results.
Secondly, be proactive. Push your team to champion this new philosophy, encourage them to exchange documents, share improvement ideas, and generally be the role models driving this change.

For example, at Upwork, on our product marketing team, it's common for a PMM to share tooling, education, processes, and more with the rest of the team for feedback or awareness. This aligns with our core values – we genuinely support each other's growth and betterment in an open environment.

The next step is turning this newfound behavior into a long-term habit, effectively embedding it into the team's DNA. To further cement this, you could share your team's successes with the broader organization. We love customer stories and case studies, so create a case study or story about your team, highlighting the successes of this new way of working.

I have a few more tips to help you navigate this process:

Establish role and ownership clarity: Concentrate on defining what product marketing does and clarifying its role for other stakeholders within the larger picture.
Ensure your team understands that all feedback should come from a place of positive intent: Nothing will sabotage openness quicker than fear of ridicule, so it's important to foster an open, safe environment where ideas can be tested and exchanged.
Be proactive: Changing behavior takes work, but keep at it. Change can be difficult, and people may resist it, but your persistence will pay off.
Be vocal: Consider how you're communicating with the team and other stakeholders, ensuring you highlight changes and reward people for taking this leap of faith.

How a culture of continuous improvement feeds product development

To give a real-world example of continuous improvement in action, let me tell you about a recent launch at Upwork – the launch of Project Catalog.

We decided to take a different approach to the launch, opting for a “launch and learn” process. This meant releasing an alpha and a beta version of the product to gather valuable insights and better understand user reactions.

For the alpha version, we targeted a small group of users from a series of different personas. With in-app messages and emails, we tried to encourage them to use the product. We then recruited both active and inactive users to hear a range of perspectives.

We documented all of these valuable insights so we could share them with the product team, as well as the CX team and other relevant departments. This collaborative effort allowed us to prioritize critical features and make necessary adjustments, ensuring that we could create the best possible product for our customers.

This work led to a handful of modifications and additional features for the next launch, which was our beta. This took place about a month later, targeting a larger audience subset to test the new experience and features and validate our initial assumptions. We maintained a similar testing approach but also added quantitative surveys to gain insights into user behavior and concerns at a larger scale.

Once again, this phase uncovered areas for improvement and identified critical usability fixes that needed to be addressed prior to our general availability (GA) launch. This work not only allowed us to enhance our product before going live but also set a roadmap for the few months after the GA launch. During this process, we identified essential features and functions that our users needed to be successful while using our product.

Moving forward, our focus remains on expanding and optimizing the product. We’re conducting more interviews and gathering as much feedback as possible to make our product as customer-centric as it can be.

Best practices for gathering and implementing customer feedback

At Upwork, we're lucky to have a research team that conducts a lot of studies for us, and while this is a huge advantage, I still firmly believe in the importance of personally interviewing clients and asking them questions. This practice truly helps you put yourself in your customer's shoes.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind as you approach these conversations:

Test early and often: Remember, the people you're testing with will be the ultimate users of your product, so ask meaningful questions early in the process. This will help guide your thinking and determine your direction. You certainly don't want to spend weeks painstakingly crafting a perfect positioning and messaging statement, only to have it crumble at launch because you missed some crucial customer feedback.
Go in with an open mind: Negative feedback is inevitable – there will be issues you haven't considered, and that's okay. The whole point of conducting research is to understand your customers' thoughts so you can create tools, processes, and messages that align with their expectations.
Don't overlook the importance of tapping into your existing customer base: These are the people who actively use your product. Understand why they use your product and how it adds value to their lives. One approach we've found useful is setting up customer advisory boards. It's a valuable resource that saves us from having to constantly search for new people to talk to.
Don't talk solely to your power users: I've gained a wealth of insights from casual users and people who've only logged into the platform once or twice. Learning about their struggles and finding ways to streamline their experience and make it more customer-centric is crucial.
Don’t be afraid to outsource: If you don’t have the resources for a customer advisory board, there are a lot of excellent websites available for customer research. At Upwork, we utilize a site called UserTesting, but there are tons of other options that can help you find prospects and gather their feedback.
Make the feedback digestible: A couple of different platforms and workflows can be useful for this task. One is to use Google Slides, outlining core breakdowns and specific callouts for items that need revision, alteration, or messaging issues. Alternatively, you might prefer a more workflow-oriented process, using a tool like Trello to assign action items to the relevant people.
Share your findings: You've put a lot of time, effort, and energy into finding interviewees, asking them questions, and getting their feedback, so make sure you share your results with your broader team so that the product team, channel owners, and others can make the necessary improvements that you've uncovered.

Key processes for product marketers to own

In my view, product marketers should ideally own four core areas, along with their associated processes.

The first area is developing customer and market insights to guide product strategy. The processes involved here include creating competitive reviews, customer journey mapping, conducting win-loss analysis, and persona creation – all contributing to that overall objective.

Secondly, product marketers should handle product positioning and the development of messaging strategies for the target audience. The key process in this area revolves around creating a positioning and messaging document. This involves determining how to best position the product and identifying the narratives we should be focusing on.

The third area is formulating a go-to-market (GTM) strategy and overseeing the product launch itself. The processes associated with this include setting the stage for the GTM, as well as managing the launch process.

The fourth area involves driving product adoption and optimization using various customer and market insights. This entails conducting user research sessions, running A/B tests, and carrying out post-launch marketing; it's crucial to consider how we can continue telling our product's story even after the GTM launch.

How to take ownership of a process without stepping on any toes

Taking over ownership of a process can be a pretty delicate matter, as there are so many variables. Factors like the complexity of the process, the current owner's rank, and your relationship with your supervisor all come into play. For some, it may be as simple as discussing directly with their supervisor about the process they want to own, then crafting a strategy to build influence and take ownership.

However, let's consider a more formal approach. First, you need to fully understand the situation. Get a clear grasp on the process you want to own, considering the core areas and where you'd fit in best. Sometimes, processes involve multiple stakeholders and owners, so you might just want to own a subsection of the broader process. Also, try to understand why the current owner has ownership – it might have something to do with the company's setup.

Keep in mind timing too. For example, if a product launch is only two weeks away, it's probably not the best time to try to insert yourself into the process. You may have to wait for the next opportunity.

Next, look at how you can get involved with the project or learn about the process from the current owner. Gather as much information as possible. This can lead to opportunities to exert influence. Identify gaps and areas where you can add unique value – what insights can you offer that nobody else can?

Then, arrange a meeting with your manager to present your findings. Explain the opportunity and why you should own this process or project. Discuss the unique value you can add and the approach you would take to handling the process. Ultimately you want to get their feedback. There could be reasons behind the current structure that you're not aware of, but the person you report to can aid you in navigating the politics behind the process.

You'll also want to arm them with detailed documentation. For instance, a deck that outlines your findings and decision-making process can be incredibly valuable. When they need to discuss this proposed change with their superiors, they'll have something tangible to present. This makes it easier for decision-makers to grasp your perspective.

The next steps can vary a lot based on the situation. In some instances, you may need to meet with stakeholders or the boss's boss to present your proposal for filling the gap. Here, your documentation will come in handy again, as it provides a solid foundation for your discussions.

Finally, if everything goes well and you gain ownership of the process or project, it's time to deliver. Make sure to impress your team and superiors. If you've managed to shift ownership, your goal should be to shine and demonstrate the fantastic work you can do. This not only solidifies your position but also helps to build your influence within the organization, assisting you in future situations when you're looking to take on more responsibilities.

Above all, remember to take ownership, deliver quality work, and be vocal. Ensure you share your victories, celebrate your team's successes, and talk about all of these wonderful things that you're now able to do because you're an owner – and it's awesome!

This article is based on Matthew’s gripping interview on the Product Marketing Life podcast. Listen to it in its full glory here!